Payments News

The Merchant Advisory Group has long warned its members about the many pitfalls associated with the global card brands’ contactless initiatives, but none of these initiatives conjures up more concerns than their honor-all-devices/wallets policies.

These policies reflect a bold effort by the brands to extend their traditional honor-all-cards policies to fifth parties outside the historical four-party network model. As payment devices evolve from simple magnetic-stripe cards to devices equipped with powerful computer chips, the range of activities that might be conducted by chips that were originally conceived as simple payment processors grows exponentially.